


Flying Lessons

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Romance, Romantic while still being movie-verse compliant!, Slow Dancing, Space Spanish, Sweet, everyone is over eighteen, let's all swoon a little thinking of cassian dancing, pre: rogue one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 19:23:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16960044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: Captain Cassian Andor is asked to teach a princess to dance. Little does he know how much one simple task will give him back the memories of home and hope for his future.





	Flying Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to ThePilot (https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepilot/pseuds/thepilot) for not only beta-ing, but for cheering me on when I needed some rare-pair encouragement. And another thankyou-for-your-cheer to the RogueOne discord group. You all are the most supportive crew around.  
> Comments always welcome!

Cassian is used to giving lessons. To young cadets, to recruits, to other soldiers. Teaching them to square their shoulders, to hold tight to their beliefs, to aim their blasters to kill even if their ideals wish they could shoot to disarm.

He was one of the first to learn those lessons, and now, he shares them with others, some younger, and good deal of them older than him, but all with more hope in their eyes.

Cassian is used to missions, too. The impossible ones, the dirty ones, all the ones that blend together. He can’t remember the last time he had more than a few days to rest. That’s fine by him. It’s easier to always be moving forward, than to sit and think of the past.

But even with all of those things being true, he’s never been placed on a mission like this one. Or, instructed to give a lesson quite like this one.

Neither, it seems, is Bail used to giving this sort of mission to anyone. The Senator stands in the middle of the gilded office, shifting his weight slightly from foot to foot, the easy tell of nervousness.

“I’m not quite sure I understand,” Cassian begins, voice soft and low. Not sure how to say _you’ve picked the wrong guy_ without sounding like he’s trying to shirk a duty. Maybe he might have argued, a little more, if his arm wasn’t still in a sling from the last battle, and the pain meds they gave him making him a little woozy. “Beg your pardon,” he adds, just in case he’d slurred his earlier comment.

“She’s normally very well guarded.” Bail replies, answering a question Cassian didn’t ask. People do that too, he knows, when they’re trying to convince themselves of something.

“Of course, of course,” he keeps his voice low and soft. His eyes down, studying the tiles that make the mosaic gemstone floor. Each one of those little tiles would be enough to buy a new blaster, a new winter coat for a recruit. Some of their recent bases have been cold enough for even him to notice, and the parkas are in short supply.

He’s given away his last two, to two different shivering ensigns, on two different planets. But he can’t remember either of their names. Easier that way, when the deaths are posted.

Or when he’s given a mission to stop a deserter.

So, instead of thinking, he counts gemstone tiles. The opulence of Alderaan frustrates him like a pebble in his boot. He knows Bail has done so much for the Alliance, and that his coffers fund much of the expenses of a Rebellion. But there are still worlds of contrast between the way the Organas live here, and the way the troops do out in tiny tents on far-flung basis.

He swallows back that frustration and says the words he’s said for most of his life, without regret, “yes, sir.”

“Good. I’m glad I can trust you to offer these lessons to Leia.” Bail nods curtly. “You’ll be teaching my daughter to dance.”

“I’m sorry.” He pauses, staring at the man. Repeats the word, and motions a bit with his injured arm. “Dance.”

“Yes. Quite. You do know, don’t you? I thought I recalled you stating as much when you went undercover.”

He’d been thirteen on that mission. He’d lied his way into them believing he was at least fifteen. He’s not even sure how old he is anymore, not with the lie he told them, the lies he’s written on countless forged documents under dozens of names… but he knows he’s barely older than the princess and yet light years away from her.

But he is young, for an officer, so maybe that’s why they’ve selected him. As if he knows anything about the way a princess will dance. As if he knows anything about dancing, anymore.

When he’d said he could dance, he thought they simply meant any dance. He’d been young and wide-eyed and thought that a simple goal united every one of the people he’d met since leaving Fest. He hadn’t realized then, that different people lived in different worlds.

Even in the Alliance.

Sometimes, it seemed like, especially in the Alliance.

* * *

 

A princess would never dance with a refugee from Fest. Perhaps smile and wave, maybe hand one a token meal bar or new coat. But never dance with one. Fest's dances were not those of the Core Worlds. Fest's culture was not theirs. Which meant, even if he could blend in with them now, all those of the Core, Cassian would never be one. Even if Cassian was an officer now, so officially, such things didn’t matter. But he is a field commissioned officer, and one whose role was intelligence, so such things did matter. He didn’t have the formal training, the education of those who lived their days in senatorial palaces and their nights plotting rebellion. He wasn’t polished, not like that, not unless he was impersonating an Imperial officer, and even then, those actions didn’t feel like his.

Although, he is an officer, even in if it’s in the Rebellion that can barely afford the metal his badge is made from and he had to admit that. He did recruitment work. He made plans. So he also couldn’t sit in the hastily made barracks among those recently enlisted and pretend he was one of them.

The Princess is waiting in an enclosed courtyard, walls high enough to keep out any spying eyes, though he notes they’re not high enough to block a well-thrown grenade. He supposes on Alderaan, one doesn’t worry about such things.  But even on Alderaan, he notes, the princess has a small holdout blaster tucked under the bright blue vest she wears as the top level of her outfit. That’s the only way he can describe her outfit. Multi-leveled. Like blueprints made from ribbon and lace and who knew what else. Kriffing expensive things that he’ll never touch.

The princess, too, is older than he’d thought. She glares at him with the same intensity of her father, though her features are far more delicate.

“Princess Organa,” he bows his head, because that seems to be the right thing to do. At least hs arm isn't in a sling today, and he can sketch a bit more of a bow, if she glares. He doesn't want to, but it's good to have options. His life often depends on options.

“Captain Andor.” she replies. The military title surprises him. What’s even more surprising, though, is that she catches his emotion, one he’s been trained to hide. “Let’s not mince words. We both know this is an assignment, for both of us. A duty that needs to be done.”

Back home, they’d danced for weddings, for funerals, for the days when the sun was bright and days when there was no sun at all. But that had been a lifetime ago. The young man he was now didn’t dance.

“And, where shall we begin with this duty?” he asks, softly.

“You tell me.”

“Beg your pardon.” That was one of the first phrases he learned from the leaders. It was polished and simple and complimentary. He’d been told, repeated, by Draven, when he was much younger, that saying _huh?_ And _what? And “que?”_ would make him sound like an uncultured bantha.

At that time, he’d never even seen a holovid of a bantha, but he knew he didn’t want to be one. He also hadn’t known what uncultured meant, or that, even in the rebellion, there was a sense of cultured. Of rightness. Mon Mothma had it. Senator Organa had it. And clearly, from the tilt of her chin and her poise, Leia had it too.

 _Bien Parado_ , he remembers his abuela saying. Well stood. One of those words there is no translation for, none he’s ever heard and liked. Not that it matters.

Cassian is always slouching. Half from tiredness, half from always being ready to run. Right now, he doesn’t feel like running. He feels like shouting at the princess, at the courtyard, at the whole of Alderaan and demanding to know why he’s cooped up here, on some farce of a mission, instead of out on assignment.

He’d told himself he wouldn’t shout at the princess because she might cry.

Leia, now, he realizes, is not the type who will cry.

She puts her hands on her hips. “You agreed to this. You teach.”

“I _agreed_ to this?” He turns it into a question, but one with a bitter sting of rage. “I agreed to give you a dancing lesson. I did not know you’d show up dressed like it was a… fashion show!” He couldn’t think of a better insult and his brow furrows when he realizes how poorly it landed.

“What else am I supposed to dance in?”

“Anything.” His parents used to dance. In the kitchen. Outside, when the snow would pause in its falling. In the doorway, when his papá would come home. Only rarely did his mamá wear a dress, a long flowing skirt with thick-fur lined boots and a warm cloak, lined with streaks of all different ribbons. When she wore that, he knew that night, there would be a party. The band would play, the dancers would gather. Prettiest of all the dancers, would be his mamá.

Those nights, when she spun, the colors of her skirt and her cloak and the firelight reflected on the falling snow twirled around her like the aurora. His abuela would tell him those lights came from thousands of dancers, just like his mother.

Even on planets that have the same phenomena, the same dancing lights, Cassian doesn’t look up anymore. He doesn’t want those colors, that small bit of childhood magic, to know what he’s done underneath them.

“Right, so aside from my outfit, is there anything else wrong?” Leia sounds tired, and it surprises him he didn’t catch that instantly.

“There’s no music.”

Leia whistles to a small droid, waiting nearby. It chirps, happily springing to the call of action, and starts a song.

The music echoes out of its tinny speakers.

The melody, though, belongs to his past. It’s wild and rhythmic and full of all the instruments he never thought he’d hear again. The notes of the bandoneóns are as much home as anything else. It sends him reeling, back, back into the past. Into watching his parents dance through the flickers of a dying fire.

Of watching his home burn to the ground.

He swallows.

This was a task for him, after all.

“I… see.” There’s nothing he wants more than to run, far, far from this. Far from the princess, watching him with concern in her eyes. Far from the song that is all the past he needs to forget.

 _It is a dance for lovers, mi hijo,_ his mother said, when he asked when he’d learn the sweeping moves and dizzying twists. Even at five, he had the confidence to assume he’d be able to do anything an adult could, and wasn’t content to spin and jump around with his cousins.

So, why is it a dance the Princess of Alderaan needs to know?

“Perhaps the Courscantian waltz would be more proper, no?” He hears it already, the slide back into an accent he works to break.

The princess commands the droid to turn off. Thankfully, it does. The silence is much better than any alternative.  He doesn’t know the Courscantian Waltz. He isn’t even sure if they have one, but what doesn’t Coruscant have a copy of?

“You are dismissed,” she says coolly, sounding much older than her eighteen years.

* * *

 

He hopes, guilty, that will be the last of it. That he can nurse his injured arm in peace, and then, return to a mission. A real mission. Not whatever that had been. Some stupid droid with a recorded song he'd thought destroyed. Some glittering, pampered princess. Everything on this planet glitters. Perfect and clean and expensive.

The snow back home had glittered too, but not like this. And even that glitter could be dulled when the lights danced in the sky high above. Those same lights color his dreams, all twisting shades of blue and purple, melding into melodies from the past. He wakes up enough times that K-2SO helpfully offers to fetch him a tranq. Or twelve. Or hit him over the head with a table.

He says no, politely, to all of the above.

Instead, he asks, “do you know the princess’s little music droid? Red? Like a little glittery mouse-droid.”

“would you assume I knew every droid?”

“I” he sighs. “I don’t.”

“The droid’s model number is POD-12-APP.”

“Can you splice into it and delete a song?”

“That is… an odd request. Even for you. You are statistically odd.  You spend 86.13% more time alone than the average male humanoid of your rough age and”

“Thanks, Kay.”

“Deleting the song will essentially destroy the droid. I can do that. Or I can step on it.”

“Neither. Forget it.”

He tries to sleep, again. It fails, and he eventually gets up and does a weapon check. As he’s cleaning his blaster’s scope, he asks, “do I really spend that much time alone?”

“You average 19.3 days between conversations with people that you code as friendly.” K-2SO's optics blink at him in the mostly dark room. “You do not, however, use the word friend.”

No. He didn’t. Because he only had comrades.

* * *

 

The next morning, he’s again sent to the courtyard. The droid is still there, lurking, in the corner, carrying music that brings more pain than a knife can. After all, he’d been trained to remember that physical torture can only hurt his body. But his mind, his memory, those things are more precious, and so much more fragile.

“Father says the waltz won’t work,” Leia comments. Today she’s dressed far more practically, in a jumpsuit and bright blue boots, her hair braided into a ring around her head. “And he made me skip practice at the range for this.”

“The range.”

“Pistol’s not for show, flyboy.”

He makes a face, despite himself at the insult. He was far from some dashing pilot who deserved that insult. He was used to more cutting remarks. _Lie-seller. Traitor. Spy_ The last one was his job, but other soldiers said it the way they spit the Emperor’s name. “I see.”

He’d much rather be giving her shooting lessons, if he had to. He's much better at that, then this. Then pretending he... no. That is a lie. He is good at pretending. He is bad at  _being._

She flashes him a smile, then, and that must be the smile that makes soldiers say her name the way some still whisper prayers to the Force.

He swallows. Hard. “And what’s wrong with the waltz?”

“He says the purpose is supposed to be specifically Festian dances.”

He finds it hard to swallow, suddenly, for a completely different reason. “I’m afraid I don’t know much of them.”

She offers him her hand. “Will you teach me what you know? If not, I have no problem lying to him and saying I know them now.”

It’s a request, not a command. The difference is noted, and rare in his life. He closes his eyes. Breathes deep, and feels as if he’s pulling in the frigid air of long ago. “I will do it, Princess.”

“Call me Leia. Please.”

“Leia.” It’s a name much like the melody the droid carries. Haunting and sweet.

They begin without music. Even his childhood dances had a rhythm to them that would be unfamiliar to one from the core worlds. What did abuela call it? _Cadencia._  To give the partner the rhythm.

He finds himself whispering the word, because it’s a useful mantra instead of thinking of how the dance moves Leia’s hips against his. In a motion he’d never quite understood, at the age he used to watch the dance.

He closes his eyes. Leia misses a turn, and steps on his foot. Hard. He hisses out a breath, has learned long ago never to shout in pain.

Leia, however, shouts. And swears, like a newly enlisted rookie. “Oh, kriff. Kriffing hells. I’m so… fiefek. I knew it. I knew I’d be shit at this.”

It’s a side of her so unlike all he’s heard, that he has to just rub his chin in amazement. “Prin-Leia?” he asks. Her title has withered away under all those curse. Maybe she’s not so cultured after all.

“I hate dancing.”

“Why?” All his memories of dancing were full of joy. Even his papa, who so rarely smiled, would grin when the drums started, offering his hand to mamá, who would accept with a twirl of skirts. The two would dance, and dance, and dance. Cassian remembers nodding off on a sister’s shoulder, watching his parents be the last two to leave the circle.

 _It’s the only time they can be free,_ his sister had said. _It is the time they fly together, not apart._

The dance lessons get better from there. He finds ways of coaxing something like rhythm from the princess, and she finds new ways of stomping on his toes at every turn. He’s taken to wearing workman’s boots.

One day, she shows up barefoot, and blushes when he raises an eyebrow.

“I thought it would do the least damage,” she explains, wiggling her toes, and laughing. “Besides, it’s spring.”

It was spring. That was true. Flowers bloomed around them, and each day the weather turned a little warmer. Never oppressively hot. The word oppression never belonged to Alderaan.

Was that why Bail refused to drain it of all it’s beauty? To keep one pristine, lovely place away from the destruction the Emperor brought? He wasn’t sure. It wasn’t his call to make, anyway. He was just an intelligence officer.

Even if dancing with the princess made him think things that were certainly not intelligent. Like how lovely she is, spinning away from him, in the _molinete,_ a twisting turn that only now does he remember the name of. Cassian leads, as his father did, but the steps he steps are a little softer than the ones he remembers. He's not his father, any more than Leia is hers. When they move, twirling through the courtyard, always on rhythm with the eight-beat of the song, they are just two dancers. Two figures turning, pulling apart, coming together. Not a spy, not a princess. The dancing gives them back to themselves.

* * *

 

 Other names come back to him as they dance. _Inclinada, giro, cruzada._ Words his mother taught his sister, as she learned to dance while he’d kept time banging on an overturned pot.

The first bomb he remembered hearing the day the village had burned, he’d thought it was a drum.

 _Corrida_ , a running motion in dance. But what he had done when his mother told him to, as well. Ran, and did not look back. There had been no stars in the sky that night, no dancing lights. The tears dried as ice on his cheeks. Now, he feels sunlight on his skin, and there's nowhere to run. The courtyard traps him with his memories, and with her. 

“Like this,” he says, now looking only at the princess, moving her through another winding figure eight. She's learning quicker now, than before. She's different than he'd thought. Smarter. More stubborn. Braver. Because when she fails, she tries again. And again. The droid sometimes lets out a sad beep, reminding her there are other songs, but she shakes her head. For them, there is only this. One song. One task.

 _Arrepentida,_ to change one’s mind. He thinks, as he takes a forward step, letting her slide back. A term for adapting to the crowded dance floor, moving like a bird in the air. She’s trusting him more with each dance, letting him lead. He doesn’t know how to dance any other way.

Her foot hooks around his, and for once, doesn’t end with a stomp on his boot. She dances better barefoot. He tells her so.

“I think I’d do a lot of things better, if I was allowed to do what I wanted,” she replies, with a small shrug.

“Like what?”

“Like sell all my dresses, and only wear fatigues. If it’s a war, there’s no need for frocks.”

 _Junta._ Close. The way he is becoming with someone who he shouldn’t be.

He doesn’t have any trouble sleeping, not any more. The music is in his dreams, but instead of showing him the past he’ll never have again, it teases him with futures that can never be.

One night, in his dreams, the dance becomes a horizontal one. The clothes she wears melt from a dress the color of sky to battle fatigues to nothing at all.

K-2SO provides helpful facts about his heart rate when he wakes from that dream.

He glares and strips the bed in sullen silence.

K-2SO informs him that such things happen to some percentage of young men each night.

He has to bark out a laugh then, because even if he’s only been shaving his face for a few years, it has been a long time since he’s called himself a young man.

 _Ah, the time for dancing,_ his abuela said, as he sat next to her by the fire, watching the couples assemble, summoned by the music, just like the stars are summoned by the moon. _The time for youth. For young love. Watch! See, el entregarme!_

_The surrender._

_You, my little one. You will dance like that someday, as fast, as free as your papa. And whoever you have in your arms, ah! The surrender shall be sweet to them. Young love always is._

But his Papa had fought for freedoms outside the dance circle and had paid the price. It’s the same that he knows will come due for him one day. There will be no surrender. Not to dancing, and not to love.

There is only the fight ahead, long and cold and silent.

* * *

 

“Princess?” he asks softly. She’s not standing anywhere near her droid. Instead, she sits at the edge of the artificial lake. Her feet dangle into the blue water. He tries not to calculate how many ration packs the cost of maintaining that lake would buy. But he also tries not to notice the slender turn of her ankle, her smooth calf.

“Do you know why they want me to be able to dance?” the princess asks.

He’s sure he does, sure it has everything to do with the glittering life she leads. She’s a princess. Princesses dance and preen and sparkle like cut gems thrown out onto a dance floor. But she’s Leia, too, and he wants to hear her bell-like laughter again, despite himself. He wants to see her shine, more like the aurora did. Beautiful, powerful, unreachable, and so full of hope. His abuela told him the aurora would hold everyone's hearts, make them shine like stars, when their dance is done. He wonders if that is true, and if the aurora back home has room for one more heart, as broken and faded as his is.

Despite, or perhaps because of that, he teases, “so you can join the lunar circus on the fifth moon of Navidep?”

“Is there really a circus there?” her eyes get wide. “Oh, it’s not fair! You’ve been so many places.”

It wasn’t exactly like he’d been a tourist to any. Or that he remembers most of them. But he finds he doesn’t want to tell her that and more than he wants to lie to her. “No. I made that up.”

She smacks his shoulder then. Playfully. It’s the first time he’s been touched by someone other than K-2SO in… in a year. He swallows. There's probably a statistic somewhere in there. He tries to take a breath. It’s made more difficult by the sudden lump in his throat.

“Oh! Did I… I forgot. You’re injured. That wasn’t your bad arm, was it?”

“I am fine, princess.” The term slips out

“You should call me Leia, you know.” Her voice goes quiet, conspiratorial. “We’re both part of the same… project after all.”

He turns to face her, his fingers curling tight around the stolen edge, so that they don’t reach out and touch her, instead. Better to feel rough granite against his hand. Better not to image how soft, how warm her skin must feel.

He keeps his voice light, teasing, gentle. He’s trained himself to hide everything he feels. He can hide this too. “Then you should call me Captain. If you’re a recruit, then I outrank you.”

That makes her blush, suddenly. He hadn’t expected that. “I… am just a recruit, aren’t I? Just a kid.”

He doesn’t think that. Not at all. She’s eighteen. A senator herself, apparently. Something he’d only learned recently.

“Leia…” he tries out the name. She doesn’t look up.

 _Caida._ A fall. He’s fallen. That’s for sure. Fallen in a way that only feels like flying.

“Why do they want you to dance?”

She shakes her head. “It’s stupid. It’s a kriffing stupid reason at a… there’s not even a curse for the type of awful party it will be.”

He provides her several options, in four languages.

She smiles at him, and nods. “All of those. And more. Maybe I won’t even dance. I’ll just… sit in a corner, somewhere. Watching. Waiting. I’m good at that. My whole life, I’ve been waiting to help.”

He, on the other hand, has helped by paying with his life. He’s written the Rebellion a check in his blood, and he has no doubt they’ll cash it in, whenever they need to. But he doesn’t want to think about that. Not with her. “My abuela would say, do not be a…” he stutters, suddenly, because he doesn’t know a word for what she would say. Because some things, like dancing, like love, he only knows in the language he learned them in. “a _planchadora_.”

It feels more intimate to share that word with her than the curses. Because he offers her a memory, as precious to him as any gemstone floor.

She taps his calf with one wet toe. “What’s that mean?”

“It is a… a person who sits outside of the circle all night. Waiting to dance. Never being asked.”

“I see.” She sighs. “That’s me, then.”

“Perhaps.” He begins.

Carefully, stupidly, he reaches out with a hand. Her cheek is as soft as the syllable of her name, soft like silk against his calloused fingertips. Soft as the sigh she lets out as she leans against his hand.

He’s had moments where he’s seen the red tracing dot of a sniper on his chest, moments where he muttered his last goodbyes to the universe as black smoke pours from his damaged ship. None of those moments, however, feel as dangerous as this one.

He finishes with a whisper,“You should be the one leading the dance.”  

She moves closer to him, closer than any dance has brought them. Then, her lips touch his. The contact is enough for every moment, every warning alarm, to fall silent. The stars swim in his vision, but he won’t close his eyes. Cherishing this moment.

Her hands sink into his hair, keeping him close. He doesn’t pull away, but his hands remain respectfully on her shoulders. He’s touched her far more intimately on the dance floor. When things meant less. Now, each moment means everything.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

It’s a strange thing to say for a kiss. But he’s not had many in his life, not many that were as genuine as that one.

He can’t return the kiss. He knows it’s forbidden, and he’s not one to break rules from commanding officers. Instead, he offers all he can. Carefully, his palm brushes against hers. Just like a dance, she understands his movement, and responds according, opening her hand to his. Their fingers lace together.They don’t kiss again. Silently, they watch the sun set, hand in hand. Then, Leia stands, and asks, “dance with me? Once more?”

He agrees. It’s their best dance. He surrenders from the role of teaching, lets her lead, even lets her spin him, which surprises them both with his laughter. It’s sudden and soft, like a bird’s feather. She smiles, and spins him a second time. They move together, through the song. Neither one notices when the droid loops the recording once, twice, three times.

The song is done when the stars drop from the sky, replaced by dawn’s light. She whispers thank you, once more, and this time, it’s in Festian, a soft whispered one. The word makes his heart ache. Because he’s not sure why she’s saying it, when she’s the one who’s reminded him how to fly. But it’s time for him to go. He knows. The dance is over. So, he departs, without another word.

 _Salida._ The exit, and yet, the first step of the dance.

* * *

 

Time passes, and he stops hearing music in his dreams, long before he stops dreaming. K-2SO tells him statistics about that. His least favorite stats are the ones about how few days a human can go without sleep. His favorite statistics are the ones K-2SO shares about the Rebellion, slowly taking hold across the galaxy. They've had an influx of resources from a mysterious benefactor. Meanwhile, the younger Senator Organa is seen wearing the same dress, two weeks in a row, to a Senate vote.

He hopes she knows he sees her soaring. He sees her take the lead. He doesn't hope she thinks of him, because to think of him is to mourn him. And he doesn't need that from her.

The dancing lessons fade with time. His posture sinks back into his vulpine slouch, though there is a brightness in his eyes that he doesn't notice and K-2SO can't find any statistics to explain.

He thinks nothing more of those two weeks in a sunny courtyard, until one rainy day on Yavin IV.

“The mission went well,” the officer says, as they all sit around the holo-table, waiting for the incoming transmission. There's always a bit of a delay, here, with how old the equipment is. Draven likes to tell people the older the tech, the harder to hack, but that just sounds good. It's no more true than any other excuse they make.

Cassian unfolds his arms. “Mission?”

“Organa’s first.”

He’s not one to usually be behind things relating to missions. But he finds himself asking, “and that was?”

The operative next to him chuckles. “Went to a Imperial Officer’s Ball.”

That didn’t seem like a mission… Something isn't right. He listens closer.

“The theme was conquered worlds, as I heard it. Can you believe their nerve?”

His fingers tighten into fists. _It needed to be a Festian dance._  That had been clear. A dance that would fade away with the passing of years, moving into the relics of holovids and memory. There had been so few survivors from Fest. Fewer with each passing day. At the party, the officers danced on the graves of his family, then, with every whirling pass and stomping foot. They wouldn't fly. Not like his family did. No, they would be beasts of carrion, churning on the floor in their black dress uniforms, laughing and mocking all they sought to eradicate.  And Leia had been there. Worse. He’d helped her get there.

“And?” the operative on the other side said.”What about the princess? Who’d she conquer, eh?”

He should smack their heads. They should know better than to gossip.

“Slipped manax root into the punch.”

Cassian closed his eyes, only for a moment. It’s an emotional tell, one that Draven would call him on. He does it anyway, and pictures a blue lake and a warm hand in his.

“That would have ruined the punch,” K-2S0 says. “Manax root, for humanoids has a 0.00012% chance of survival. Do you think the Princess was aware of this?"

Yes. Yes, she’d been very aware.

Thank you, she’d said. For one sweet kiss. For one warm dance. For one last moment of freedom, before the Alliance’s stormy waters pulled her in.

For that one night, they’d flown together.

 


End file.
